Anna Louise Marty

Umbrella Term explores the transition from student to professional, questioning fashion’s position between art and design within systems of production and consumption. Repetition is the central theme of experimenting with artistic practice versus the functional mode of production. The umbrella hat is the overarching form of the collection, repeated across 4 looks that delve into the educational experiences that precede the development of these learnt skills into labor. 1, 2, 3, 4, 50 jumps to the repeated nature of design, with the final item a production of 50 fans. The making of these fans becomes an endurance artwork and personal experiment with the mass of reproducible designs; the outcome of the profession of a designer, compared to the one-off production by artists.

The consumption of the work is also part of the experiment. At the final stage of this collection, past its role in the educational space, it will be presented in a gallery and sold as artwork. However, the consumption of the collection goes beyond the commerce of commodity fetishism, distancing people with money by purchasing. In pockets of community, these pieces become gifts shared amongst queer friends, and collective pieces of art by local drag artists. In these spaces, these pieces escape the capitalist requirement for the selling of my labor and allow my art to be shared rather than consumed. This collection aims to test these boundaries of art, design, production, and commerce as I close my journey of learning about these practices into practicing them myself.

This hat is inspired by the essence of your classic umbrella hat. The hat I wanted as a child and the mass produced drop shipped commodity that my child brain thought was a highly coveted unique fashion product. But which view is true, can they both be? This hat dissects the hat that was almost a myth in my head, to reveal a new interpretation of its produced reality.

Getting back up. School has always been a struggle for me. I have lived with a hearing disability my whole life and in order to ensure my comprehension I have often had to try again or repeat lessons and tasks. I have a deep want and interest in learning skills and new ways of thinking which make it so devastating when I am reminded these institutions are not made to accommodate.

This hat draws from a design I had wanted to make, but life got in the way and I was not able to complete my vision at the time. The process of coming back to a failure to learn and grow from that failure is something that I now recognize as a strength. This hat transforms from a fan to an umbrella, exhibiting a full circle moment.

Fun fact: “And Again” was the name of my first art project in my freshman studio class, which funny enough was a self portrait.

This hat plays with contradictions. Ethical consumption vs commodity fetishism that distorts the relationship to the people who make our goods. Making art for profit vs making art for the community. Making for function vs making for dysfunction. Recycling, but is that even real?  This hat reckons with the labor of making this collection for school and the labor I am marketing to sell from this platform as I move into a professional setting.

I learned how to sew from my grandmother, but she learned from my great grandmother, Glenna Plunk. My family often tells me I took after Glenna, who was an extremely talented seamstress and quilter.

Quilting has really turned into a passion of mine, and with that I find myself growing closer to Glenna, a grandmother I never met. In the ethnography  “Achievement-Based Sentimental Value as a Catalyst for Heirloom Gift-Giving” by Daniel M. Grossman and Ryan Rahinel, they discuss  the sentimental gift giving of heirlooms and how they can serve not only as a sentiment of the creators legacy, but a way to motivate future generations to follow in their footsteps. I related to this, in how my grandmother Shirley Marty served to pass down the skills of sewing while she herself was no prodigy to her mothers talents.

Before Glenna passed she made two quilts for her grandson's children, my brother and I. In this hat I take direct inspiration from one of the quilts she made using a Robbing Peter to Pay Paul pattern (how topical;). The making of this hat is simultaneously to honor her legacy and differentiate my own art from that legacy; acknowledging that her achievements have influenced my own while giving us both a stage to stand on. Though she is not here, she has been a cornerstone of my education, and I imagine she will always be a teacher to me. But I must now become my own artist.

Supply, demand, obsession, 50 fans are everything I love and hate about design. The utilitarianism of a single reproduced design. This piece is an endurance test, a reality of the consequences of a job in design. It’s a commodity you can buy from me, but I wish it was simply a gift for me to share with people I love.